From traffic to tourism: how World Cup cities are using AI to prep

The 2026 FIFA World Cup spans 11 US cities, 104 matches, and an estimated 6+ million attendees. For host cities, this creates practical challenges that go well beyond the stadiums themselves—in traffic management, public safety, transit coordination, and visitor services.

FIFA and Lenovo have built a significant AI layer inside the venues, covering everything from semi-automated offside detection to real-time broadcast infrastructure. However, each host city has also been building its own AI systems to manage the operational demands of tournament hosting, with some investing more than others.

Tournament-wide AI infrastructure

While every host city has its own approach to AI, several AI systems are operating across all 11 host cities rather than within any one of them. Salesforce, as an Official Tournament Supporter, deployed its Agentforce 360 platform and Slack to give FIFA, host cities, and their operational partners a shared environment for managing staffing, logistics, and communications in real time.

Brand USA, a destination marketing organization, has also worked with host cities to expand an AI-powered visitor ecosystem for the tournament. Its “America the Beautiful Game” initiative includes a national trip-planning hub and a network of city-level AI concierges that help international fans discover experiences across all 11 US host cities.

Texas: Dallas, Arlington, and Houston

Traffic management

Arlington's most notable deployment is an AI-powered traffic management system developed by NoTraffic. In late 2024, the city invested $600,000 to install sensors across 30 intersections in the Entertainment District surrounding AT&T Stadium, with a plan to reach 40 intersections by 2026. The system uses computer vision to detect road users, predict traffic flow, and adjust signal timing in real time. 

“With NoTraffic’s tools, we're able to look at our streets and evaluate how many drivers are arriving at an intersection,” says Chris Funches, Arlington's city traffic engineer. “This information can help us more accurately adjust the signing timing plans to help reduce traffic congestion.”

Houston, which also deployed the NoTraffic platform near NRG Stadium, has seen a 15% reduction in average vehicle delay on the affected corridor, an estimated annual savings of 20,873 vehicle hours, and a projected economic value of over $40 million across five years—along with a reduction of more than 16,000 metric tons of CO₂ emissions.

Visitor assistance

Both Dallas and Houston are also leaning on AI for visitor-facing tools. Visit Dallas and Visit Houston are part of the broader push among US host cities to launch AI-powered concierges that help fans discover neighborhoods, restaurants, and events around match days, with city tourism organizations positioning these assistants as long-term tools rather than single-event microsites.

New York and New Jersey

Visitor assistance

The NYNJ World Cup Concierge was developed by AI company Neurun with architectural support from Google, using Google's 3D Maps, local Search, and AI capabilities. Accessible both online and as a physical interactive kiosk at Grand Central Terminal's Graybar Passage, the Concierge provides match-day transit directions, venue information, estimated travel times, dining recommendations, and real-time routing in multiple languages.

NYC Tourism + Conventions has also deployed two additional AI assistants through GuideGeek: Ellis, oriented toward business event planners, and Libby, a general tourist assistant available in 60 languages across the NYC Tourism website, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Both assistants are expected to continue operating after the tournament.

Kansas City

Visit Kansas City partnered with Mindtrip, an AI-powered platform, to offer a dedicated AI trip-planning assistant for fans attending matches at Arrowhead Stadium. 

“Partnering with Mindtrip provides our visitors with a curated experience driven by their needs,” says Traci Moon, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Visit Kansas City. “This personalized travel platform connects our 28.4 million annual visitors with Kansas City’s beloved cultural attractions, welcoming accommodations, world-class sports and diverse culinary scene.”

Los Angeles, Miami, and Seattle

While these three cities are on opposite ends of the country, they share a common challenge: routing large volumes of international visitors through transit systems that weren't designed for event-scale demand.

Los Angeles deployed Angel, a World Cup-specific AI concierge launched by the LA Tourism & Convention Board to help fans plan around match days and explore the city. Angel sits alongside LA’s existing digital channels and is designed to answer questions about neighborhoods, transit options, and events that are relevant to the World Cup period.

Miami's Greater Convention & Visitors Bureau developed an AI assistant that automatically shifts into a World Cup-focused mode when fans access tournament-related pages, prioritizing match logistics and local recommendations over standard tourism content.

Seattle, meanwhile, deployed Emerald, a Visit Seattle AI concierge operating in more than 45 languages, to serve the multilingual audience arriving for six matches at Lumen Field. 

Atlanta and Philadelphia

Atlanta

Like other host cities, Atlanta is using AI in its visitor channels. Discover Atlanta offers Atlanta Travel Chat, an AI visitor assistant that provides recommendations on dining, attractions, and fan experiences for visitors coming to eight matches at Mercedes‑Benz Stadium.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia deployed Axon body-worn cameras with a real-time AI translation feature covering approximately 50 languages, enabling officers to communicate directly with international visitors on the street. The technology provides two-way audible translation and was activated as part of a 40-day Emergency Operations Center launched on June 10 to coordinate public safety, health, transportation, and communications across city and regional agencies. Philadelphia PD expects that the Axon system will remain in service after the tournament.

Additionally, the city's official visitor assistant, Ask Ben, provides multilingual guidance to fans attending six matches at Lincoln Financial Field.

Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area

Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area each face a geography challenge: both host their matches at stadiums located some distance from the city center, served by transit systems that require cooperation across multiple agencies.

Boston's seven matches are at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, roughly 25 miles south of the city. Meet Boston offers an AI trip-planning tool at meetboston.com to help fans figure out how to get between downtown Boston and the stadium, alongside recommendations for what to do before and after matches.

Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara is nearly 50 miles from San Francisco and is served by regional operators, including Caltrain, VTA, BART, Capitol Corridor, and ACE. San Francisco Travel has embedded a conversational AI planning tool into sftravel.com for visitors planning trips around Bay Area matches.

What comes after the tournament

Most of the infrastructure built for the World Cup won’t be leaving in August. Arlington's NoTraffic deployment is now part of its standard traffic management stack. Philadelphia's Axon translation cameras remain in everyday use. AI visitor assistants in places like New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, and Kansas City are positioned as ongoing services, not one-off campaigns.

This reflects a broader change in how cities approach large-scale events. Rather than building one-off infrastructure, many are using the World Cup as a forcing function to accelerate longer-term investments in AI—particularly in areas like mobility, public safety, and visitor services where real-time coordination matters most. The result is a more persistent layer of intelligence across city systems, one that continues to shape how residents and visitors move through these environments long after the final match.